No long-term commitment for Scottish HIV payments, blood inquiry told

THE Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has not pledged any long term commitment for HIV payment contributions in Scotland past the current financial year.

Scotland’s Public Health

Minister, Mairi Gougeon, told the Infected Blood Inquiry that HIV payments operate differently under the Scottish Infected Blood Support (SIBS) scheme which was set up in April 2017.

Giving evidence remotely from St Andrew’s House in Edinburgh she explained there had been discussions with the previous Public Health Minister in 2016 or 2017 about the future of HIV funding – and whether DHSC would be continuing payments or if the Scottish Government would fund it through Barnett consequentials.

Samantha Baker, team leader of the Infected Blood Team in the

Scottish Government’s Health Protection Division, also gave evidence remotely from St Andrew’s House. When asked by lead counsel Jenni Richards QC about the funding, she said: “Under normal arrangements we should receive Barnett consequentials for that because as far we were aware we never received any Barnett consequentials from the UK Government following devolution in relation to HIV schemes.

“We proposed that but DHSC came back and suggested, instead, they would continue providing HIV funding rather than writing a Barnett consequential.

“They’ve done that since and agreed to do so this financial year although it’s not yet clear if that and they will continue long term.”

Ms Richards asked if this constrained what the Scottish

Government could do, to which Ms Baker replied: “No, it doesn’t, because we set our funding based on the funding we think we’ll get”.

She added there is “a slight difficulty in that normally we only get told how much HIV funding we’ll get in December of each year”, with finances calculated internally.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock is due to give evidence to the inquiry later this week.